I had the pleasure to attend the 2017 State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting early morning ethics session on Advertising Rules and Social Media presented by Gene Major, Director of Advertising Review at the State Bar of Texas (SBOT). Gene opened with humorous examples of what not to do as well as examples of attorneys who promote their businesses and services in compliance with the bar rules, and in particular, Section VII of the Texas DRCP.

The Advertising Rules pertain to ALL forms of communications: audio, visual, digital/electronic, informatics, recorded phone messages, social media. My 2016 summary of Gene’s presentation can be found here, and below are additional reminders from the 2017 preso.

1. Submissions for Review -- Like him or not, the “Texas Law Hawk” Bryan E. Wilson creates videos that adhere to the guiding principle for online and other promotional content: you should strive to educate and inform. Gene noted that Bryan sends all his videos to the Advertising Review committee for approval -- prior to running them.

REMINDER: You should submit videos and other promotional advertising content for approval. Also, you should send new social media accounts, such as a new business Facebook page, as well as a new website to the Advertising Review Department. (Link to submission form.) You do not have to continually submit periodic updates made to your website, such as a new attorney’s bio or a news item. Only substantial changes such as the addition of a new practice group would require submission to Austin. The submission fee is $100; the fine for non-submission is $300, and a violation of the disciplinary rules. (As I mentioned last year, you may find it handy to add the SBOT Advertising Rules page to your browser's hotlinks.)

2. TESTIMONIALS -- Did you know? Texas permits client testimonials that could be considered “soft” testimonials such as those stating an attorney “called me back in a timely fashion,” or “treated me, my spouse well…”

NOTE: For inclusion in advertising in Texas, the nickname must not overpower the firm name. Gene gave an example of an attorney billboard (from outside our state) where “My Bald Lawyer” was far larger than the font size used for the firm’s name – this would be non-compliant here.

CAUTION for solos: If you are the only attorney at the firm (no other associates), then “Smith and Associates…” is non-compliant.

4. Public/Non-Public Media – SBOT Advertising Rules distinguish between ads that appear in “non-public” and “public” media. Non-public media includes legal newspapers and directories, materials mailed to other lawyers, information sent because of a request, and information sent to clients and past clients. Public media includes anything else that is intended to reach the general public, and by Rule 7.04:

must list the geographic location of the principal office;

must follow the Rule’s guidelines regarding contingency fees, cases to be referred, and when applicable – must indicate an ad is paid for by another attorney or group of attorneys.

5. Settlement figures – Publicity of a settlement may require inclusion of the exact amount, down to the penny. For example: a congratulatory ad in a lawyer-focused publication (non-public media) could show a round settlement amount “$72m,” while an advertisement disseminated to the public must list exact net – “$14,958.78.”

6. Blogs – In Texas, blogs are not considered a “public media advertisement” if:

they are educational or editorial;

they comment on a specific area of or development in law;

the main goal is that a reader discover “how wonderful you are/gain credibility on a subject area.”

I noted this in the 2016 summary, and it is worth repeating here because Gene emphasized it again this year: “You can really establish yourself in your area of the law – if you blog.” He reminded the audience, “People don’t want to hear about your results – they want to hear about what’s going on in (particular areas of) the law.”

BTW, are you considering starting your own legal blog aka blawg? Consider working with Lexblog.com, started by @KevinOKeefe, pictured here (left) with Gene Major (right).

7. Actors / Clip-art – The use of an actor to portray an attorney, or the use of clip-art that depicts a lawyer in the graphic or illustration, may violate Rule 7.02 (7). Likewise, an image that includes clip-art or actors to depict clients would be prohibited. The goals of these guidelines are to avoid misleading information. (See also Comment 13 to 7.02, Rules 7.04(g) and 7.05(a), and Comment 12 to Rule 7.04.)

Deliver business development, marketing, growth strategies and tools at the forefront of legal practice, and

Educate and empower attorneys to develop business in compliance with bar rules.

We are available for comprehensive marketing services, project and short-term contracts, and presentations including CLEs. Contact us today to arrange a complimentary meeting to discuss your strategy for advancement.

]]>Texas Bar Advertising Rules - 2017The Death of Expertise - for LawyersBook SummariesTeresa MartinMon, 24 Apr 2017 17:02:33 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/24/the-death-of-expertise-for-lawyers551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58fe1c41d1758ef4286c8d61According to Nichols, patients and clients are outright rejecting
professionals, and will even tell those professionals why their advice is
wrong. They dismiss professional, licensed experts frequently and with
anger. How might this come to affect your client relationship? How does
this rejection mindset affect a jury trial?

Starting with the economic downturn of 2008, the legal world has experienced a tightening related to billing pressures. Today, the field is under pressure from several forces: the increased staffing of in-house legal departments, the advance of digital legal services such as Legal Zoom, the encroachment of Big Four/Consulting practices, and Limited License Legal Technicians. All of this has occurred while the value the public places on “the professions” has decreased, leading some to describe the phenomenon as the “Death of Expertise.”

Author Tom Nichols is a Professor of National Security at the Naval War College, adjunct at the Harvard Extension School, and a former US Senate aide. He recently published The Death of Expertise to document his observations on the prevalent rejection of expertise and learning.

The increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement and distrust experts.

— Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise

Nichols opens his book by acknowledging the natural independence of Americans to have and assert their own knowledge of the world. “To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy – a way to insulate our increasingly fragile egos from ever being told we’re wrong about anything,” Nichols says.

Advice and the Ego

Now, an in-house attorney seeking advice from an esteemed law firm partner would seem to negate the primary assertion in that statement because the corporate counsel seeks the best advice, right? The key is in the secondary part of Nichols’ statement: our increasingly fragile egos. Anyone who’s read Freud or taken a basic Psych 101 course knows Freud had a deterministic and pessimistic view of the ego, one that later leaders in the field modified toward the concept that social interaction and internal motivations shape human behavior. The corporate counsel’s motivation is toward obtaining the best advice possible for a given situation…but would he or she be strong enough to accept advice that negates or proposes a change to their own position, even when shown good reason, because of the effect on their perceived value of self-worth?

Rejection of the Sages

We see this conflict daily in Twitter’s 140 characters as well as in other social media platforms and website blogs. More and more, people are displaying a militant deafness when it comes to opinions outside their own. It’s gone beyond someone turning to WebMD for a diagnosis or Wikipedia for historical reference. According to Nichols, patients and clients are outright rejecting professionals, and will even tell those professionals why their advice is wrong. They dismiss professional, licensed experts frequently and with anger.

How might this come to affect your client relationship?

How does this rejection mindset affect a jury trial?

“Not only is everyone as smart as everyone else, but we all think we’re the smartest people ever. And we couldn’t be more wrong.” ~ Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise

He notes that we all bring our own biases into conversations even when seeking outside advice. One such example is Confirmation Bias, where we may ask a question, but ultimately will only listen for answers that confirm a position we already hold true. The problem with Confirmation Bias is that it is “nonfalsifiable” as Nichols describes it: “MY evidence is always the rule; YOUR evidence is always a mistake or exception. By definition, MY position is never wrong.”

Nichols believes we are in a time when people have convinced themselves that “everything is going wrong…and the experts (are responsible…)” Nichols is clear in his book, and reiterated in the recent CSPAN broadcast of his Heritage Foundation presentation, that his position is not to say we should resignedly obey what experts say. He believes that experts are servants, not the masters, that experts are here to serve the rest of society. He agrees, of course, we have to question (experts) – but the overemphasis on egalitarianism – that we all must be partners – is part of the problem. He spoke with a frustrated surgeon who said he’s to the point of putting the surgical instruments on a tray and telling a prospective yet patient, “Okay, you’ve consulted Dr. Google, you fix your knee.”

Nichols followed up to say he is skeptical of medical ads that say, “Everyone else has told you no? We’ll tell you yes.” I believe a similar situation confronts the practice of law.

IMPACT FOR LAWYERS

Nichols’ depiction of what has transpired in the general public is a new phenomenon, and it is happening outside of your control, without you. That doesn’t mean you can’t affect perception. Because of the atmosphere of questioning or even denouncing professionals, it becomes all the more necessary to tell your own story, to take control of your version of the conversation – online. If the average person, whether acting in their personal capacity or in their role representing a business or organization, is increasingly more skeptical of another’s capabilities and acumen, then the content you place online and the strategic way in which you leverage that content can help you demonstrate your value.

When you explain why your knowledge and experience matter (instead of just listing achievements and accolades), you provide evidence as well as factors that can inspire a reader to value the depth of experience you have to offer. Again, it's not how many notches you have on your belt so much as the stories you tell to explain how those notches came to be and why they matter.

Further, as I have noted in recent blogs on Artificial Intelligence and the automation coming to legal tech, the more you can add to your arsenal of skills, the more unique your particular brand of expertise, and the more difficult it is to replace you with an automated option. Some attorneys may go so far as learning how to code, and no doubt as newer lawyers are minted, some of them will have learned to code prior to law school. Coding is not a necessary requirement to gain an edge in the changing economy. If you learn enough about legal technology and the technology affecting your clients' businesses to be a conversant member of their business teams, you will continue to be esteemed for your wisdom and ingenuity. The keys are leveraging new tech for knowledge and for efficiency, because today's clients demand it.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>The Death of Expertise - for LawyersThe Time for Lawyers to Understand Blockchain is NOWFuture LawTeresa MartinMon, 24 Apr 2017 15:26:42 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/24/the-time-for-lawyers-to-understand-blockchain-is-now551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58fe06f746c3c4c432120de0"Blockchain is positioned to become as ubiquitous as the internet,
something we don’t see or even think about, but that affects many, many
things that a lawyer's clients do." ~ Hélder SantosYou may be familiar with Blockchain from its relationship to the financial world. Just in case you would like to learn more, or want to learn how blockchain relates to legal practice, here are two great articles.

In January, Law Technology Today (LTT) wrote a two-part article, "Blockchain 101 for Lawyers." Part 1 explains first just what IS blockchain, and then describes is applicability for lawyers. As far as the definition, the photo above is a helpful reference. A distinct block of information is secured, then a subsequent secure block created when new information is created as a business process moves forward. A chain develops because the movement is only forward -- the idea being that you cannot go backward and undo, interfere with, or otherwise change data in previous blocks.

Meanwhile, the information contained within the blocks is not captive of one party. The parties to a transaction can confirm transactions in real time because all have access to the transactional ledger, as the article describes it. Blockchain provides precision as to the timing of data entries and other activities recorded. While blockchain began in finance, its value as a data-recording and archiving tool have come to the field of healthcare, and now to the practice of law. Part 1 continues to outline the security of the design and impact on clients.

In Part 2, the LTT article describes the strategic timing for lawyers who realize the regulatory, logistical, and yes - the legal implications blockchain will have for clients. "[T]he lawyer as trusted advisor is situated differently than others most likely to have blockchain savvy (e.g. IT advisors). Yes, IT knows the technology (maybe). But only the lawyer can extrapolate from the technological understanding to what this really means for a client operating in a law- and regulation-bound environment," LTT, Blockchain for Lawyers 101...Part 2, Jan. 31, 2017.

Blockchain is positioned to become as ubiquitous as the internet, something we don’t see or even think about, but that affects many, many things that a lawyer’s clients do.

— Hélder Santos

Last week, Hélder Santos of CMS Services EEIG published a blog post, proclaiming that blockchain technology could be a "legal mind-blower." His post opens a bit tongue-in-cheek saying if 20 years ago, internet-based tech confounded some attorneys, then blockchain will be a "real mind-blower." He explains the basics of blockchain, and adds the important point that blockchain is a technology on which other systems have been built -- and some of those systems have been hacked. Knowing this equips lawyers to better advise their clients as they together seek to anticipate uses of technology and future pitfalls.

Santos explains how Steptoe & Johnson has created a multi-disciplinarian practice to help manage blockchain for clients, and that the firm will also accept Bitcoin as payment. Still, he notes that the technology is in its infancy, that a majority of servers blockchain utilizes are located in China, thus there is concern for security.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>The Time for Lawyers to Understand Blockchain is NOWDo You Need a Marketer or a Niche Specialist?Business DevelopmentTeresa MartinFri, 21 Apr 2017 14:04:00 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/24/do-you-need-a-marketer-or-a-niche-specialist551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58fdfe85d1758eec4bd8aa30Aa marketer empowered with 360-degree vision can help you obtain greater
value from your niche specialists.In the past year, I have been asked to assist with a handful of situations where someone had engaged a niche specialist who adequately addressed the niche issue or project. The complaint? The time and expense devoted to the specialist had little to no impact on the entity’s business development goals.

There are clear situations where you should engage a niche specialist – someone called upon for a specific need, such as the re-design of your website or a writer to craft digital content. In fact, they may satisfy the completion of the assignment, however, their work will reside in a silo unconnected to business development strategy unless you also engage a marketing professional or the person at your firm who actively oversees your marketing and business development efforts.

The person charged with leading your marketing must have a comprehensive view of your business and an understanding of the business and goals of your clients and your target market. They should also have a vision for where you are headed and a plan to get there, and continuously incorporate this vision across all elements related to your business growth and your interactions with clients and prospects – whether the marketer is fully engaged in leading an initiative or merely acts as a supervisor to a specialist who handles the majority of execution. Your marketing leader, whether that’s a hired hand and/or an existing leader with marketing responsibility, must ask the question, “What is the benefit and value to the overall organism and objectives?” A specialist may ask these questions, but often only as they relate to the task at hand and thus may lack the global vision you need.

Today's interconnected world demands interconnected solutions. A marketer empowered with 360-degree vision can help you obtain greater value from your niche specialists.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>Do You Need a Marketer or a Niche Specialist?WHY Should You Care About AI?Artificial IntelligenceTeresa MartinWed, 19 Apr 2017 17:59:46 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/19/why-should-you-care-about-ai551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58f74af4ff7c5042d67864db"AI is important because it offers the buyers of legal services alternative
ways of getting something they need faster and cheaper -- and for
straightforward matters, inevitably better -- than they can get it from
you." ~ Jordan Furlong

One of the first people I followed when I joined Twitter years ago was Jordan Furlong, @jordan_law21. So, it was no surprise to me that he was one of the first to discuss Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications for legal practice.

Despite the growing conversation around legal technology this year, many attorneys still seem to think such change is far away on the horizon. Many also disbelieve or discount the applicability of AI, machine learning, and deep learning – to their legal work. Therefore, after the recent Stanford CodeX #FutureLaw conference, I reached out to two people I saw there, and to Furlong, to help address a question I had heard from lawyers at firms of all sizes:

"Why should I care about AI?"

I ran into Campbell after one of the morning FutureLaw sessions and we discussed programming in the legal space. Campbell replied to the AI question with the following:

"Technology offers smaller firms a new opportunity to gain a competitive advantage over the big boys. In particular, technology can help smaller firms get work done cheaper, faster, and more efficiently thereby minimizing the advantage provided by more staff and larger practice groups in big law. For example, doc review used to be a manual task performed by legions of associate attorneys and paralegals. Smaller firms couldn't take on the biggest cases because they didn't have enough staff to get through discovery. Now, by employing automated methods, smaller firms don't need a huge staff to complete discovery and can start competing against the big firms for the biggest cases.

"Also, because many big firms have been slow to embrace new technology, smaller firms can market their use of technology as either an improvement upon the services offered by big law or a way to offer the same quality service at a cheaper rate. For example, in my patent practice at IP Informatics, I use data, search techniques, and predictive models developed by my technology company, IP Logic Systems, to augment my own intuition and experience when advising clients and preparing work product. This use of technology allows me to deliver higher quality service (i.e. work product based on all relevant patents not a time limited subset) at a lower cost (i.e. I can perform prior art searches and draft claims in less time using technology tools)."

Campbell Yore is co-founder and CPO of IP Logic Systems Inc., a predictive analytics company that helps technology companies and legal professionals make better decisions throughout the intellectual property lifecycle. As CPO, Campbell leads the patent product development team at IP Logic. He brings real world patent prosecution experience to IP Logic’s product design process to ensure the company’s technology delivers useful, relevant knowledge at key points in the patent operations workflow.

Frogger image via Softpedia.com.

ANAND UPADHYE:

Later that afternoon, I was pleased to run into a friend I had met at a Legal Marketing Association conference three years ago. Anand Upadhye is the VP of Business Development at Casetext -- a technology-based solution for litigation legal research. (It’s notable, too, that Casetext just received $12 million in Series B funding.)

While the largest and elite AmLaw firms have been able to test the waters with AI options like Casetext, there are emerging software and services for the medium to small law firm crowd. For example, Casetext’s product Cara automatically conducts legal research.. Here's Anand's reply:

"When weighing the value of AI, I think it's helpful to ask, 'How much legal research time have you written off this year?' After 2008, technology impacted document review. That's pretty much been solved, and now legal research is in the technology cross-hairs. Some major companies today follow a policy regarding outside counsel where they will refuse to pay for legal research performed by a 1- to 3-year associate, and at some of these companies -- outside counsel must agree to this arrangement prior to engagement. Yet, the work has to be done, but at what cost? That's where AI steps in.

Smaller and medium-sized firms have to examine realization rates closely because they are often on the cusp of determining whether to hire a new person, or whether they can get paid on work they are doing. Or -- is there a technology solution to meet those realization goals? AI-backed software gives smaller players the edge through increased efficiency and increased research value. Legal clients today are interested in working with firms that use cutting edge tools."

Anand R. Upadhye earned his J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law. He practiced law for six years, first as an Assistant District Attorney at the San Francisco District Attorney's office, then as a civil litigator specializing in products liability. As a litigator, he tried several criminal and civil jury trials, deposed numerous witnesses and regularly represented his clients in court. Before law school, Anand worked as a paralegal for a plaintiff's-side consumer protection firm, primarily assisting with securities fraud and other financial services litigation.

JORDAN FURLONG:

Jordan Furlong brings the focus home by rephrasing the question I posed to the group:

"It might be helpful to rephrase the question as, “Why should I care about technology that performs basic legal tasks quickly and inexpensively?” That’s really all that AI means at this stage of its deployment: it’s tech that automates routine legal work -- and more importantly, tech that gets better at that work the more often it performs it. I think that’s something any lawyer should be interested in, either as a potentially useful tool or as a potentially problematic competitor.

Most legal AI right now is aimed squarely at large-scale commercial and litigation work, because that work is massive and overpriced and there are huge efficiency gains to be made (and therefore, lots of money to be made by the efficiency-gainer). The venture-capital funds backing the AI startups are looking for big returns quickly, so the “BigLaw” part of the market is probably where these providers will focus for some time yet.

But the consumer/family/small business market in the US is still worth a couple of hundred billion dollars a year, and soon enough, someone with legal AI is going to plow into this market. The obvious entry point is wills and estates, and as soon as somebody figures out how to design and market a lawyer-backed, tech-powered automated online will-making service (which would barely pass the “AI” threshold anyway), lawyers in smaller firms are going to feel the impact. And that will be just the start.

The biggest mistake that incumbents in every industry make -- every single industry, and law is absolutely no exception -- is saying, “My customers won’t want that.” Never assume your customers or clients won’t be interested in something that’s faster than you and cheaper than you. Never assume that something faster and cheaper than you can’t also be as good as you, or maybe even better. And never assume that “quality” -- which is what I hear most lawyers say is their unbeatable advantage -- is as important to your clients as you think it is. Most of your clients don’t want “the best.” They want “good enough.”

AI isn’t important because it’s “robot lawyers” or however it’s being overhyped now. AI is important because it offers the buyers of legal services alternative ways of getting something they need faster and cheaper -- and for straightforward matters, inevitably better -- than they can get it from you. That’s why you should care about AI.

Jordan Furlong is a speaker, author, and legal market analyst who forecasts the impact of changing market conditions on lawyers and law firms. He has given dozens of presentations to audiences in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia to law firms, state bars, courts, and legal associations. Jordan is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and a member of the Advisory Board of the American Bar Association's Center for Innovation. He is the author, most recently, of Law Is A Buyer's Market: Building a Client-First Law Firm, and he writes regularly about the changing legal market at his website, law21.ca.

My two (ahem) Bitcoins:

Building on Jordan’s last thought above -- (that AI offers the buyers of legal services alternate ways of obtaining what they want faster and cheaper) -- relates to another chief reason for lawyers to care about AI:

Your clients are using and will use AI to solve

their business issues and opportunities.

The more you understand how AI and machine learning applies to a client’s industry, the better equipped you will be to deliver top-notch legal and business advice, plus identify technological tools to help you produce solutions, ultimately enhancing your competitive edge.

APRIL 26: Spring Legal Mindstorm -- Remarkable changes are coming to the field of law, and with greater speed than any changes in the past five years.

This afternoon seminar will provide an ethics CLE session (0.50 pending) followed by interactive panel discussion regarding the new technologies and changes facing legal practice today and the future of law, including: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Blockchain, Chatbots, Smart Collaboration, the Death of Experitse, Non-Lawyers, and more.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>WHY Should You Care About AI?Stanford CodeX FutureLaw Conference -- Summary, Part OneFuture LawTeresa MartinTue, 18 Apr 2017 13:23:28 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/18/stanford-codex-futurelaw-conference-summary-part-one551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58f5e95920099ed0c8f12b75The breadth of an attorney’s legal-related work may shift when automation
steps in to handle routine and repeatable tasks – and the results of
automation will better and more efficiently inform an attorney for the
legal work to be done. It will be more a blend of artificial intelligence
and human intelligence – where the humans design and direct machines. ...
If the human adapts to this new setting.

I stumbled across the Stanford CodeX #FutureLaw summit last year…mere days AFTER it occurred. I made sure to attend this year. CodeX strives to “promote progress in legal technology,” and its annual FutureLaw summit provides an opportunity for legal tech innovators from across the globe to meet and learn ways to “advance legal tech to solve fundamental problems in the field.”

The Law Geex quickly summarized several of the key tweets and trends, my top take-aways are below.

The Agenda served to address the general future and “re-invention” of law as we know it, covering aspects of

Predictive analytics in law,

Mechanized legal analysis and the systems to create them,

Pros and cons of chatbots,

How law schools and clients are approaching the changing legal landscape.

Keynote – Reinventing LawProfessor Gillian Hadfield of USC’s Gould School of Law delivered the keynote in which she identified five rules:

Change the conversation

Don’t leave it to the lawyers

Change the rules

Catalyze and fund research

Invest in legal innovation

The list echoes conversations I heard at the January Marketing Partner Forum produced by Thomson Reuters’ Legal Executive Institute. Their Codex FutureLaw summary is here, where they noted the quick popularity of point number two, “Don’t leave it to the lawyers.” This interests me as someone who straddles the linear world of law and the creative world of marketing. In the future, lawyers will become less the lead or driver of an institution (like the traditional, historic firm where non-lawyer activity and actors lie at the outermost periphery) and instead will share in a collaborative system, where each player’s role may ebb and flow between (lead and follower). Thus, the future (which is already here, by the way) cannot leave it only to the lawyers, and prefers interconnected minds and ideas for innovation and survival.

Lawyer Extinction?The extinction of a particular practice would be a rare event, although an attorney’s inability to adapt may create that ominous result. So, where does adaptability intertwine with the Future of Law discussion?

A major advantage of recent technological innovation has been the increased speed and accuracy of processing data – the result of Artificial Intelligence (AI). With AI, we can feed a machine a set of data, teach it a set of rules, and ultimately produce predictive analytics for a variety of areas of law. The downside, or at least the cautionary point arises when human biases are factored into the data fed to a machine. Panelist Gipsy Escobar of Measures for Justice reminded the crowd that data can “reveal latent biases or information we don’t have…” and thus uncover issues to anticipate or even new causes for concern. Add to this: predictive variables, where a model can change what actually happens…subsequently making the original model wrong.

Panelist Dera Nevin, e-Discovery Counsel with Proskauer Rose, noted, “Data-driven law can make things transparent. This is a fantastic opportunity.” She continued, saying we should always examine the ends (of a given objective) and ask, “Are the ends based on logic or emotion?” Escobar said, “Probability will spit out false positives, and as a society, we must determine the consequences when that occurs.” Co-panelist, Josh Becker of Lex Machina added, “In the medical world, machines may have an error rate of 1- to 3-percent, but that is less than with humans where there is a 20- to 25-percent error rate reading mammograms, so the machines are helping.”

Follow the Rules…?The Rule Systems Panel carried the pro/con debate further as they discussed computational law and compared rule-based and data-driven approaches. For example, during a demonstration of a study related to Stanford’s efforts with autonomous cars, the audience saw an example where the car come to a complete stop for an indefinite amount of time – because it had been programmed to follow essential driving rules. When the car faced the dilemma of a double-yellow-striped line to its left, and an obstruction in its lane ahead, the car simply stopped safely shy of hitting the obstruction, but unwilling to break the rule of Not Crossing the Double Yellow Line. This aided the car’s programmers in mapping philosophical and mathematical frameworks to help the car identify instances where a standard rule (the double-yellow lane) might be violated.

Michael Mills, Co-Founder Neota Logic, explained, “We who write at the code level don’t care about the tradeoff in formulating a law as a rule or a standard because we are writing for implementation – the audience wants an operational, useful answer.” He added that successful systems generally require a hybrid of “rules-based” approaches and those using tailored algorithms.

ChatbotsThe early afternoon introduced three innovators and the chatbots they created. First, Joshua Browder, @jbrowder1, a young Brit who developed the Do Not Pay bot after receiving parking tickets. To date, according to Browder, his bot has handled 257,000 parking tickets and has saved drivers $7 million. He has expanded his bot for other areas of law and most recently is assisting refugees seeking asylum in the US.

Browder believes government will become more efficient with the rise of technology. “Tech and chat bots will have a big impact on the law. I’m only 20, and there are thousands of other programmers working on similar issues,” he said.

Kevin Xu, @KevinSXu, a Stanford 3-L discussed his healthcare chatbot Hilbert, AskHilbert.com. His example showed how users can input natural language questions to obtain information to triage an issue and to explore their healthcare insurance status – such as total spend to date for the year – all in responsive real-time.

Two young Russian developers built Visabot after their own experience with US Immigration. Because a large portion of immigration lawyers’ work is form-driven, Visabot helps process initial communications with a client and can schedule appointments for consultations and even handle invoicing.

These three fresh chatbot examples were next challenged with the proposal from Joshua Lenon, @JoshuaLenon -- that we are about to enter (doom & gloom music here) the "Reign of Tech Terror." Lennon is the attorney in residence with Clio, and was also part of the team to initiate Airport Lawyer earlier this year, a web app that connected travelers affected by the initial Trump/US Travel Ban – with attorneys who were available to assist the travelers.

Lenon opened with an example of the dilution of legal offerings today. He said, “People were asked if they needed help, and they said no because they knew what they were doing – because they had Googled. So now, more money is spent on the top line (advertisement) of Google. The public can’t tell good legal advice from bad legal advice…thus, we will see a proliferation of bad legal advice.”

People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they are too stupid and they have already taken over the world.

He explained, saying that most people search for local information, but chatbots are global. So, interactions with bots may not produce ideal help. Plus, it is difficult to change your answer with current bot systems. This issue is easily remedied, as Lenon demonstrated. (It just requires designers to consider the option for changing responses and allowing users to navigate backwards as necessary.)

That leaves his third concern – evidence. Lenon remarked, “Will we ask people to save every bit of text and information to prove their decisions?” He concluded, “Chatbots may do triage, but may not be the panacea. They may lay groundwork for legal follow-up.”

Lenon’s summary bolsters my point of view: the breadth of an attorney’s legal-related work may shift when automation steps in to handle routine and repeatable tasks – and the results of automation will better and more efficiently inform an attorney for the legal work to be done. It will be more a blend of artificial intelligence and human intelligence – where the humans design and direct machines. ...If the human adapts to this new setting.

More in Part Two: Future Law from law schools, legal services, and in-house counsel.

19 April 2017 - updated to correct the spelling of Joshua Lenon's last name, and to correctly identify Joshua Browder as creator of DoNotPay.

APRIL 26: Spring Legal Mindstorm -- Remarkable changes are coming to the field of law, and with greater speed than any changes in the past five years.

This afternoon seminar will provide an ethics CLE session (0.50 pending) followed by interactive discussion regarding the new technologies and changes facing legal practice today and the future of law, including: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Chatbots, Smart Collaboration, the Death of Experitse, Non-Lawyers, and more.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>Stanford CodeX FutureLaw Conference -- Summary, Part OneWhy the Smart Lawyers Will Employ Smart CollaborationBook SummariesTeresa MartinThu, 13 Apr 2017 13:18:00 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/18/why-the-smart-lawyers-will-employ-smart-collaboration551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58f61c4d20099ed0c8f35fc7"Clients understand that your collaborative prowess is an important and
valuable resource for them, too." Smart Collaboration can show you how to
increase your level of engagement, contacts, revenue, and service to
clients.

When Heidi K. Gardner, PhD presented at the January 2017 Marketing Partner Forum, the slide shown above was likely the one that caught the most attention in the room -- and with good reason.

Collaboration is the Key

Dr. Gardner’s research focuses on leadership and collaboration in professional service firms, and shared her findings from her study of law firms, the way lawyers work with each other, and the ways clients want to work with them. Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos is Gardner's book summarizing the study. To be clear, Gardner means smart collaboration, as opposed to cross-selling.

Business Value of Collaboration

Gardner makes the business case for collaboration from a revenue standpoint as well as a team-building, knowledge-development process. She explains how someone with a lone-wolf style and someone who wants to collaborate but fears loss of control or quality of service can each learn how to work together for the benefit of the client, and for improved efficiency among the attorneys. For example, she explains how collaboration can help drive reputation and referrals.

Smart Collaboration includes anecdotes and examples from actual firms. In the graph above, Gardner illustrates one firm's data of two attorneys (Jen and Kim are not their real names). Placing both attorneys with the same number of referrals (5) at the start of the year, attorney Jen strives to build her collaboration network by both accepting referrals and sending work to others. The number of work referrals she received from new contacts and previous collaborators has risen significantly. (See pages 134-35, Smart Collaboration.)

Smart Collaboration discusses lateral hiring for better results, attracting Millennials, solutions to potential barriers to collaboration, and outlines ways to structure compensation to support and encourage collaboration. The pinnacle benefits of employing smarter collaboration are clear: it will give you broader perspective on clients' problems and deepens employees' sense of engagement.

The closing chapter gives voice to clients who appreciate and welcome collaboration. Why? Because as Gardner says:

(Clients) understand that your collaborative prowess is an important and valuable resource for them, too.

APRIL 26: Spring Legal Mindstorm -- Remarkable changes are coming to the field of law, and with greater speed than any changes in the past five years.

This afternoon seminar will provide an ethics CLE session (0.50 pending) followed by interactive discussion regarding the new technologies and changes facing legal practice today and the future practice of law, including: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Chatbots, Smart Collaboration, the Death of Expertise, Non-Lawyers, and more.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>Why the Smart Lawyers Will Employ Smart CollaborationHow Might AI Impact the Future of Legal Practice?Future LawTeresa MartinTue, 04 Apr 2017 15:15:26 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/4/4/how-might-ai-impact-the-future-of-legal-practice551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58e38def414fb535a419e4ac"Nearly all partners surveyed think tech is here to stay...yet only 4%
evaluate their partnership as highly prepared to deal with the new
reality." Lawyers are always pressed for time and finding ways to become
more efficient. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning can help
with efficiency as well as making work easier, both for attorneys and
clients. Will you be a part of the Future of Legal Practice?A Twitter survey earlier this spring asked, “Are you concerned about Artificial Intelligence?” My reply:

One of the over-arching themes at Social Media Marketing World centered on AI – Artificial Intelligence. No surprise, AI has overtaken most conversations regarding politics, The Future, science and technology, and even the future practice of law.

Here, I summarize notes from the Thursday morning session led by Christopher S. Penn @CSPenn, and the Friday morning Keynote panel, of which Penn was a member, along with Sandy Carter of Ecosystems, Christopher Carfi of GoDaddy, and Bryan Kramer of Pure Matter as moderator. If you’re in a rush, you can skip to the Conclusion for Lawyers at the bottom.

Marketing is the over-arching, big umbrella under which various activities fall, including: sales, social media, SEO, market research, customer insights, media buying, and more. For decades, the Brand has pushed content to Consumers, yet with social media, Consumers are in the driver’s seat, and savvy Brands now employ social media listening tools to follow the interests of their audiences and serve back to them what they tell the Brands they want. Fast-forward…

Cognitive MarketingPenn opened his presentation with a quick state of the nation: marketers lack agility. Marketers and marketing tools don’t learn fast enough (anymore). Solution? Cognitive Marketing – marketing that learns using AI technologies. Penn explained, “AI tech is a lot like humans – only it evolves faster and better. Fundamentally, an algorithm is a set of rules that are repeatable and performed by a computer. All social media is an algorithm.” An algorithm is a bit like a recipe – you oversee the ingredients based on what you want for the outcome. The magic happens with Machine Learning.

Penn illustrated his human learning/machine learning parallel: “Hand a toddler a pile of blocks, and he will start to learn – trying to figure out how the blocks fit together, what patterns can be created. That’s independent learning. If an adult stands over the toddler holding a red block and repeats, “This is RED,” over and over – the child will begin to learn to associate the word and the color. This is supervised learning. Supervised learning teaches a machine to recognize patterns. We teach a machine, ‘This is my Twitter handle,’ and it begins to recognize that information within other text. Machines need help, though, recognizing good sentiment versus bad sentiment.” (Here, Penn refers to a simple machine instruction to look for your company name. It will turn up that name, regardless of whether the surrounding context is positive or negative.)

Examples of Machine LearningPenn explained that Machine Learning consists mostly of math and statistics, and Deep Learning refers to many layers of machine learning. For example:

A woman fighting cancer ran into difficulties when her physicians tried several modes of treatment without optimal impact. Her genome was fed into IBM Watson’s Oncology Expert Advisor, which it cross-referenced against 220,000 digests on chemotherapy. Based on Watson’s recommendation, her treatment was changed and she went into remission. Watson’s effort? Took 11 minutes.

If you use Google Translate, you are familiar with the process of entering one language and Google translates to another, such as English to German. A few years ago, the result was a rough approximation of correct translation – some words and phrases were inaccurate. Yet, a few months ago, the results from Google Translate were noticeably more on-target. What happened? Machine learning. Google ingested all human languages, developed its own Google language, and now translations go through an additional step before rendering results: English to Google to German. Penn commented, “Google is reverse-engineering the Tower of Babel.”

Adding Emotion to the MixPenn noted that we can present a large set of data and ask Google, “What do these things have in common?” The system will generate the common thread. Now, we can write an article about that theme. His example: In the last year, if you have followed Fantasy Football or Minor League Baseball, you have not read one article generated by a human. Think about it – much of sports is driven by statistics, fodder for a machine to spit out data-driven content. But, we have to be careful when the bias of the person entering the data colors the final product. Sandy Carter touched on this with the old adage – “When it comes to data, 'garbage in' often means 'garbage out.' Businesses must prepare for AI by collecting the best data.”

Because we are at the stage of technological development where machines can handle Natural Language (old search: “restaurant BBQ Dallas”; search now: “What's the name of the barbeque restaurant near UT Southwestern in Dallas”) – we can understand more of the context surrounding the query and thus “fingerprint the emotion of the author.” This development enables machines to use image recognition and find new commonalities, it also gives rise to the proliferation of Chat Bots that provide customized solutions for customers.

Do You Want Quinoa With That?Anything that’s rule-based can be automated. “If this, then that,” is at the root of rule-writing for code (the 50-year old BASIC programming language was rooted in IFFT for quick usability), and it’s also fundamental to decisions lawyers make every day. During AI discussion from the Friday panel, Carter gave an example of fully-automated restaurants like Eatsa, where no humans are involved in the food-service side of the transaction.

She also spoke of a store in Japan where the store’s (automation) can measure a shopper’s intention when the shopper enters the store – are they browsing, in a rush, following a routine, etc. Imagine how that might help you assess a prospect.

Carter uses AI now to inform her advertising buys, and to leverage her time. A bot may provide her with suggestions for optimal buys, but she makes the final decision. This is an example of Christopher Carfi’s belief that a portion of the population will run the machines (and others will be run by machines). Carter suggested several tools, including GrowthBot – useful for investigating the keywords companies are buying.

Conclusion for Lawyers

The legal landscape will continue to evolve, and rapidly, because of a number of factors – AI is merely one. A few significant (points) are:

1. Automation and machine learning are already here. How can you learn to think like a machine, or think in an ordered fashion regarding the data you need, the data your clients need, and the data you both produce? Identify services that will enable you to automate the gathering and synthesis of information, especially with methods that are repeatable – as those processes can be templated, taught to others -- increasing efficiency.

As attendees from DigimindCI captured: "The biggest takeaway (from Social Media Marketing World)…not only can AI make life easier for consumers, which is always the end goal, embracing AI can also make life easier for marketers, which facilitates the end goal."

Whether you like the term “marketer” or not – you are effectively in that role because you are the ultimate driver to promote your business. To do so, you must learn from your audience (clients and prospect base). AI allows this and is scalable. So, while the Big Firms take advantage of ROSS, there will be new market entrants that assist medium-sized and small firms as well as solos. Plus: you could create your own solutions, if you are so inclined. Isn’t that exciting??

2. Start NOW to uncover ways that you can think and create to make use of the machines and tools coming your way. Build your skill set and that of your team so that you broaden your capabilities and thereby avoid silos and obsolescence. Start NOW locating the tools necessary to increase your knowledge. I asked Penn how Marketers with strengths in writing and content might shore up their abilities in math and stats. He suggested studying R or Python, two programming languages for data science. If you feel a bit fish-out-of-water regarding learning code, check out BASIC. As noted above, the simple logic is akin to the cognitive steps employed by lawyers every day. Set your end-goal not to be a coder, but an “Algorithmic Thinker” because, as Penn stated, this will require you to think like coders, designers, and architects – designing systems in your head.

3. (2a.) Penn showed a list of current job roles that will likely be overtaken by machines in the future.

He pointed out, however, that if you were able to deliver in more than one area – you would be less susceptible to replacement than if you had a narrow tool set. Pair this with the concept that those who deepen their niche of knowledge -- Subject Matter Expertise -- will drive more demand generation, stronger lead funnels, and ultimately gobs of data to process for knowledge around audience and deliverables, thus strengthening their future prospects far beyond those who are generalist practitioners with only one or two of the skills noted above.

4. Leverage social NOW. If you haven’t yet fully utilized social, or haven’t even bothered with social, ask for help. Find an ally to teach you the basic platforms (Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook) and how to publish your own story. Then, teach yourself or seek tutoring/training (some can be found online via YouTube videos, for example) – so that you understand how analytics work, what to look for, what to measure, and what to do with the results of those measurements. The results will inform your next moves – thus making enhanced use of your time and your budget – as well as offering information that amplifies your unique message.

5. Leverage AI for greater efficiency. Lawyers are always pressed for time and for ways to gain time-efficiency. For the portion of your practice where you repeat processes and repeat answers to common questions – you can build bots and automated services to facilitate responses while gaining efficiency. Anything for which you have a template can be automated.

6. Penn proposed that the future will include only three primary job functions: Developers (who build the bots, programs, and write the code in order to reach goals), Data Scientists (people who can create and process the data and supervise machines on good or bad output), and Marketing Technologists (those who can convert data into Business Results). Which one are you? Which one will you be?

7. Here’s is Penn’s summary of the SMMW event. His decision tree interests me because he observed that Social Media Marketers are missing the scope of what’s coming.

This is important to lawyers because: very few legal marketers have sufficient awareness of what’s coming, let alone sufficient understanding of its application to legal practice and the business of law.

— (My two cents.)

Add to this, Gabriel Teninbaum cited a recent Altman survey: "Nearly all partners surveyed think tech is here to stay...yet only 4% evaluate their partnership as highly prepared to deal with the new reality."

Penn summarizes SMMW in another article – and also emphasizes the high value of storytelling that is strong enough to withstand numerous social platforms. I believe this is a crucial point for attorneys because the social age has opened the doors for individuals to tell their own stories in their own ways. Legal professionals who are adept at crafting content with (the right amounts) of brevity and creativity ingredients will become the next "Top Chef" of their domain in the legal sphere.

2017 SPRING LEGAL MINDSTORM – Come early for the Ethics CLE, stay for the interactive discussion of AI, Blockchain, Collaboration, Millennials, Early Exits and other topics shaping and inspiring the future of legal practice – and legal innovations. REGISTER before April 25th for Early Bird pricing.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>How Might AI Impact the Future of Legal Practice?Twitter Round-Up POST SMMW - March 25, 2017Twitter Round-UpTeresa MartinSat, 25 Mar 2017 18:55:39 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/3/25/twitter-round-up-post-smmw-march-25-2017551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58d6a982d2b857f33faef19fINCLUDED - from Social Media Marketing World: Fast Track to Know Like
Trust · The 3 Jobs of the Future & How to Prepare · Retail AI Read
Shoppers’ Intent · Which Bot May Be for You? · What Should You Automate? ·
Snapchat Insights for Business Application · Educate to Entice Customers ·
Live Video Still Requires a Strategy · A Helpful Bot for Marketers · Should
You Post or Tweet That? · How Social Gratitude Works · Bonus: Facebook Ads
Guide

This week, I attended Social Media Marketing World - the world’s largest, intense, fast-paced confluence of thought leadership in the realm of social – with actionable information as the gift. Tweets below are merely a handful of useful insights.

INCLUDED: Fast Track to Know Like Trust · The 3 Jobs of the Future & How to Prepare · Retail AI Read Shoppers’ Intent · Which Bot May Be for You? · What Should You Automate? · Snapchat Insights for Business Application · Educate to Entice Customers · Live Video Still Requires a Strategy · A Helpful Bot for Marketers · Should You Post or Tweet That? · How Social Gratitude Works · Bonus: Facebook Ads Guide

1. Live Video is a faster path to the Know-Like-Trust factor. ~ @KimGarst – Kim Garst Founder & CEO of Boom!Social. This was among many great nuggets from Kim (no surprise). For your consideration: how might you use Live Video to demonstrate your knowledge, in how many ways will you re-purpose that content to drive traffic and expand your audience, and WHEN will you start?

2. Christopher S. Penn, @CSPenn, VP of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications, (for a giggle, go to their website to view the dog video in their home page) spoke on Artificial Intelligence. He believes the future will involve three primary job roles: Developers, Data Scientists, and Marketing Technologists who can convert data into business results. Regardless of your profession, today you ARE a marketer in that it is incumbent upon you to help tell and drive your story. In the future, you should be conversant with data in order to synthesize its value -- for you and for those whom you serve.

2b. As a Marketer, I want to shore up my capabilities in math & stats. Penn recommends learning R or Python – programming languages for data science, to broaden your repertoire of what you can offer. Dan Lear @RightBrainLaw discusses the pros & cons of lawyers learning to code. For my role, and what I think Penn appropriately answered for my situation, I plan to study up to be conversant. As an advisor, I need to know sufficiently about a product or service in order to recommend and leverage it. I believe the same can be said for what Lear recommends. You can choose your depth.

3. Right now, stores in Japan are equipped to read a shopper’s intent upon entering a store. Do they want to browse, get-in-get-out, are they there for the first time or a regular shopper? This note came from @Sandy_Carter, Sandy Carter -- a driving force at IBM and currently its Worldwide GM of Ecosystem Development, who was part of the SMMW Keynote Panel that discussed the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on social media and marketing. My follow-up for you: What could you do with how you approach your work and what could be implemented on your website to help you gauge client intent and needs – faster and more accurately? This ultimately should reduce the timeline to engagement, although it doesn’t have to eschew the human factor. In other words: how might #AI help you with efficiencies on behalf of and for the benefit of your client?

3b. Sandy Carter mentioned Bots.co – a search engine “for all the bots,” organized by category. Inspired to build your own Chat Bot? The site can help with that, too.

4. Christopher Penn's Rule of Thumb for the Future: If you do it 3 or more times, that activity can be automated. If you use a template today, tomorrow – automation.

6. So…first, FOMO means “the Fear of Missing Out.” It can be the reason someone stays glued to anything (a social media platform, a sports game, and possibly>>>to YOU) MORE. Brian Fanzo@iSocialFanz spoke about this as part of his presentation on Live Video. His point related to the idea of informing your audience, educating them in advance of an offer or perk you will make later. For example, one of Brian’s approaches is a partial video. To view the last 5 minutes (wherein he shares a useful tactic or nugget of info) – he asks for your email. Great way to build an email list. Here’s the key, though: you must have educated the audience on the value, on what’s to come, so that they WANT to opt-in. Happened to me as I am writing this post.

I went to Kim Garst's site to grab a website link, and a pop-up offer appeared. I was ready to hit the X button & close the pop-up…then I read the offer. I thought, “YES. This item offered is WORTH the exchange of my name and email address. In fact, I was busy capturing the info I wanted for this post, I FORGOT to complete the form!

I went back to the site and didn’t see the pop-up, so I browsed briefly and found the offer again. I entered my info into the form that accompanied the offer. (This was on a separate page dedicated to the offer and the order form.) Soon as I was done, I was shown a Thank You page with a note as to the time it might take to receive my download…AND an offer for a related product for a small price ($9.99). The product offer was supported by information as to what to expect from the purchase (what knowledge I would gain) and enumerated specific take-aways. Motivational content to promote a sale. (See below; click-thru will take you to the Boom!Social Products page.)

How might you serve up a primary free offer to your clients, and possibly follow that with another offer? Both items could be free. Among your goals for this type of activity should be a) gather email addresses from people who are interested in the first offer, and b) determine the percent who also accept the second offer. This is trackable information to help you build your audience as well as to TAILOR future content you produce, based on the activities and responses of your audience. It will inform where you should spend your time – what topics to prepare for your blog, webinar, next book, next presentation, etc. AND – in those activities, you can also implement this approach of Offer #One, Offer #Two, and so on.

7. LIVE is no excuse NOT to have a STRATEGY. ~ @iSocialFanz Brian Fanzo, and many Social Media thought leaders are great at encouraging people to step out there & Just Do It. The reminder here is, yes – press the button on your phone to quickly, easily go Live with video – but if you also plan to leverage the results to cultivate leads and attract business, you should have a strategy.

Strategy planning should not delay your efforts to go live. Simply make time to outline the goal of the recording/event, the main points to be covered/discussed, how you will open and close, and what you plan to do with the resulting content.

9. Foundational, gate-keeper question related to the value of what you post: Would YOU share it? Great reminder from Amy Schmittaur - @Schmittastic

AND...

10. Because it’s social Best Practice to show gratitude, I was able to conclude my trip with a heartfelt TYVM (Thank You Very Much) to the American Airlines team @AmericanAir at the SAN airport – for expediting me to my plane. It was my fault for cutting my time too close to allow for the long TSA line. The AA team member fortunately had the time to help me, and was courteous (even with her appropriate, and kindly worded reminder to: make more time prior to departure).

As soon as I plopped into my window seat, I tweeted to AA to show my appreciation, so that they were aware of how their brand performed that day, and so they could share my appreciation with their staff in San Diego. Also…because of prior assistance from AA via Twitter, I knew their Social Monitors would be listening and would respond (barring any other higher-order issues, such as weather-related delays). @AmericanAir responded inside of an hour (40 minutes, actually). Pretty fast, considering I wasn’t asking for a reply (like a re-booking).

As I’m writing this & reviewing my Tweets & Twitter feed, I realized that advice from @TheJoeyColeman & tweeted by @CSPenn – "Be Strategic in your appreciation" – is technically what I did yesterday. Who knew? 😊

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>Twitter Round-Up March 18, 2017Collaboration & Client Loyalty Resource: Smart Collaboration (1 of 2)Business DevelopmentTeresa MartinTue, 14 Mar 2017 19:25:00 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/3/18/collaboration-client-loyalty-resource-smart-collaboration-1-of-2551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58cd6fd51b631bf52d1fd671I believe the Collaborative Economy will be awakened in more of the legal
landscape this year – partly driven by mere awareness of how collaboration
and the Collaborative Economy are capturing the non-legal business world,
and partly driven by the findings of Heidi K. Gardner, Ph.D.

Collaboration has been the buzz all year. (Wait – we’re only in March…) Yes, but I think that the Collaborative Economy will be awakened in more of the legal landscape this year – partly driven by mere awareness of how collaboration and the Collaborative Economy are capturing the non-legal business world, and partly driven by the findings of Heidi K. Gardner, Ph.D.

I have followed the Collaborative Economy for a while through my involvement with Social Media Dallas, Social Media Marketing World, and other digital and marketing-related interests. It’s high time that Collaboration comes to legal in a big way – because In-House has been asking for this for years. Before we get to Dr. Gardner, I refer you to what I have seen for the past 20 years -- when I first got into legal marketing, and it’s the same thing I emphasize (harp on?) today, because it is the number one thing that in-house wants -- that you (most of you) still aren’t doing: asking for client feedback.

Client feedback is a great way to understand where you are on the spectrum of the client’s satisfaction, and where you have room to repair, grow, and expand the relationship. By reaching out to the client for information – you would be in effect initiating collaboration. You want to know what the client thinks so you can continue to deliver to their satisfaction and contentment. They want you to ask because it shows a deeper interest beyond mere order-taking, and a willingness on your part to share their load and to lighten their load. Plus, the more you become ware of their business goals, constraints, and headaches, outside of or in addition to legal, the better equipped you will be to deliver, as well as create something new.

Enter Dr. Gardner. Her study, encapsulated in her book, "Smart Collaboration,” focuses not only on entities coming together for mutual work or benefit – but ensuring that the collaboration is smart, in the sense that it achieves exemplary results and incorporates all of the group's unique knowledge. She was featured in FT’s Innovative Lawyers in December 2016, and spoke at the Legal Executive Institute's Marketing Partner Forum produced by Thomson Reuters, where she keynoted & shared some of her more notable findings.

I am making my way through her book & will share a summary late this month.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>Twitter Round-Up March 4, 2017Twitter Round-Up February 25, 2017Twitter Round-UpTeresa MartinSat, 25 Feb 2017 16:14:00 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/3/19/twitter-round-up-february-25-2017551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58cee2c1b8a79b2da1427c39Included: Tips for a Legal CMO from a Tech CMO · 10 Tools for Data
Visualizing & Analysis for Business · Top 3 Characteristics of High-growth
Law Firms · Why Storytelling is so Important · Help Your Community Find
You · Clients Just Aren't That Into You

BELOW: Tips for a Legal CMO from a Tech CMO · 10 Tools for Data Visualizing & Analysis for Business · Top 3 Characteristics of High-growth Law Firms · Why Storytelling is so Important · Help Your Community Find You · Clients Just Aren't That Into You

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

]]>Twitter Round-Up February 11, 2017Twitter Round-Up February 4, 2017Twitter Round-UpTeresa MartinSat, 04 Feb 2017 15:32:00 +0000http://www.flipcatconsulting.com/blog/2017/3/19/twitter-round-up-february-4-2017551d5ae4e4b0ec87398d1aa9:5522c93fe4b05d3da26180d7:58cec587db29d633eb6f5b1fIncluded: WHY Analytics? Predictability · There's Only 1 Mistake in Legal
Pricing · 40% Don't Know · If You Aren't Measuring ROI, What Are You Doing?
· Has Your Firm Discovered the Value of Client Teams? · Clients are not
Buying... · How to Win in the Age of Analytics · The Mismatch Between
Marketing Spend and Return

BELOW: WHY Analytics? Predictability · There's Only 1 Mistake in Legal Pricing · 40% Don't Know · If You Aren't Measuring ROI, What Are You Doing? · Has Your Firm Discovered the Value of Client Teams? · Clients are not Buying... · How to Win in the Age of Analytics · The Mismatch Between Marketing Spend and Return

1. Why ANALYTICS? For one, they help you contribute predictability to your clients' budgets:

2. Discounting can take you on a downward spiral, as the AGC of Microsoft notes (tweeted by Sallas Schmidt):

3. IF: you're using AFAs (Alt. Fee Arrangements)...and you're not tracking their effect on revenue, what do you actually know?

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

Beyond Excellent Service -- How Can Firms Add Value & Inspire Loyalty? ~ @natlawreviewThis article is a preview to a panel at the Marketing Partner Forum. My comment: "A hallmarks to differentiate today is how you will partner with clients (as a business partner, beyond a legal advisor). One panelist also includes additional professionals from Marketing and IT, to help differentiate his firm and to foster meeting all of the client's needs, not just the present matter.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

BELOW: Blockchain - impact for lawyers · Employees' right to disconnect after hours · No lawyers in the Kansas Senate · Chart of the Collaborative Economy · What Twitter does better · Future-proofing HR

If you aren't on Twitter yet, it is a great platform for tracking news. It's also terrific for what @ValaAfshar (Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce) points out above -- learning from, connecting with, and interacting with people you've never met before. If you new to Twitter, be sure to leverage lists to help categorize groups of people you follow. For example, I have groups based on their tweets or professional knowledge around: Social Media, Digital, the Future of Work, the Future of Law, Analytics, Marketing, Science, etc.

Future-proofing HR ~ @iSocialFanz The article notes that the "2016 Global HR Survey by Mercer, the world’s largest HR consulting firm, underscores the need for businesses to redefine how they manage, develop, and incentivize talent to achieve growth."

Flip Cat Consulting works with law firms, practice groups, individual attorneys, and other professionals to design marketing and business development strategy. We work onsite or remotely, from specific projects to global change management. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.